What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.
That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
This maybe a bit of sarcasm, but it's actually accurate. The information was so contrived that multiple firms sent physical analysis to observe the strait in person. They all have said that the strait remains active with decreased but consistent transit. Regardless of who claimed the strait was open or closed. It's the reason oil markets are so hesitant to bid up futures contracts.
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, is ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.
The US doesn't even need boots on the ground to open the strait. Forget US casualties. The US is concerned with minimizing Iranian casualties. The goal isn't to just open up Hormuz, it's to replace the last major source of instability in the region. The IRGC has like 10% popular support in their strongholds. The US just needs to hit them when they stick their head up as often as possible while not overly galvanizing the local populations.
Are you forgetting the bad neighbor that keeps attacking most of its other neighbors, even while under ceasefire agreements? And then moving onto the land and saying "this is ours, time to redraw the border again.".
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.
Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI.
I’m sure this has nothing to do with 3.1 million graduate students versus 500 F-35s.
For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military.
So no — your request to fund graduate students is more expensive than the F-35 program and delivers at best marginal results.
When you math through per unit or per capita or per year, we already spend more on education and science than the military — and it’s unclear further science funding to the detriment of the military would improve things.
> the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student
This is not an unreasonably ratio between cutting-edge affection and long-term potential. Particularly when grad students aren’t currently configured to be earning positions.
Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.
The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.
Oh, please, that’s not true. But yeah, you need 60 seats there in order to just ram things through. Right now Democrats don’t even have a plurality of the voting public so it’s not surprising that they are completely powerless.
> Democrats couldn’t even get a SC Justice…
On this one though I’ll fully agree with you, they were 100% ratfucked on Garland’s nomination. In no universe was that more than 0% ethically justified. That was a craven and cowardly scheme.
I wish I could find it but Simon Clark, someone who specialized in climate science, had put out a video about how we were only recently able to model the AMOC and it's shifting patterns thanks to this measurement we were doing
Yrah probably someone at doge or the dept of war watched that and suggested dismantling it. What's next, closing down the NOAA because it's a "con job" and climate change is "a hoax"?
The GOP rigs elections in their favor and it's well known, but they don't have the power to throw out an additional 87 million votes if they don't go in their favor.
The logical conclusion then if despite everyone voting D then getting their votes tossed out is either violent revolution or liberation with the aid of another nuclear-armed state.
The will of the plurality you mean? He didn’t win a majority of the votes. He is the legitimately elected office holder; but it was not the will of the people, it was the outcome of this particularly electoral process. Many American electoral processes require a run off without a majority for this reason, and it’s an intensely weak platform to claim a mandate from - not only did more people not vote for you than half the voters, if you add in the people who could vote but didn’t, it’s by far not “the will of the people”.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Voting for Trump (or anyone with an R by their name) is wrong; sitting out a vote is wrong. Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance, however ineptly?
I don’t think blue team good, red team bad is a very mature take on US politics. When it comes to substantive policy, voters do not get a choice. The same wars will be fought. The same lobbies will have their way. Just because one side will make tactless, self-deifying inaugural speeches about how the sea levels will cease to rise and the Earth will start to heal, that does not make it so.
I think that if these sensors were providing useful, actionable information more valuable than their maintenance cost is not well supported.
I hate divisive language like this, but Trump's only major concrete "policy" (if you can call it that) during his 2024 campaign was that he was going to somehow lower grocery prices by instituting tariffs, so basically "I'm going to lower prices by raising prices".
That kind of idiotic quasi-doublespeak should have been a disqualifier for anyone with at least a two-digit IQ, but apparently it's not. The only scenarios that I can see for this:
1) People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
This is so idiotic because even if that were true, which it's not, those costs would still be ruled into the price. "No such thing as a free lunch" is very literally the first thing I learned in high school economics.
If people are that stupid then they can be blamed for their idiotic decisions to vote for a despot.
2) They didn't believe in the tariff rhetoric, and wanted to vote for Trump based on a nebulous "personality".
This is stupid. If you really are voting for people because you think you'd "like to have a beer with them", then you should be blamed when bad things happen from that idiotic decision.
----
Kamala wasn't a great candidate, but I really hate this sort of "both sides"-ing people do to try and engage in apologetics for people's ridiculous decision to vote for the guy who, as far as I can tell, has literally no expertise in anything.
> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I'll let you in on a secret. The main reason why nobody is catering to you isn't because what you want goes against the money, the status quo, or whatever big bad you imagine. It is because if you don't vote then you are about as good for them as nipples on a Breast Plate. There is a reason seniors get everything that they want: it is because they always show up to vote!
let's not forget that orange retard would have never got reelected if the preceding retards had not cranked their clown world antics up to eleven. the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum. just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
I'm not sure people realize just how dire this is. The politics of the largest, most powerful country on Earth are dominated by people who truly believe in dispensational premillenialism [2]. For these people their time on Earth is limited. Wrecking the Earth doesn't matter. The afterlife is forever. Senior government officials take seriously bringing on the apocalypse through a red heifer [3]. In fact, it's the cornerstone of Christian Zionism [4].
And what began this political movement? Racism [5], specifically a ruling that schools in the South couldn't be both tax-exempt and segregationist.
This was the most one-sided article I’ve seen in a while.
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.
A point that can be made is that just throwing money at something that doesn't produce meaningful results can be good to cut. having a bunch of data for data sake doesn't make it useful.
> I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project
That's the problem.
> This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision.
You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision."
Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single article.
There's an entire chain of events that the links in this article lead to...
...The NSF is descoping.
...It's descoping because of federal funding cuts to science projects
...Federal funding cuts are due to the pro-fossil-fuel biases and climate change skepticism of the rightwing Trump admin and its backers. Their ideological strategy to redesign American society, Project 2025, specifically mentions disbanding this very monitoring project.
I was able to find that all out in about 15 minutes though I'm neither American nor reside there or anywhere close to it.
A performative pretense of informed decision making is not the same as genuinely making informed decisions.
Most scientists don’t expect a full collapse this century, but even a significant slowdown would have major climate consequences particularly for Europe and Africa.
1. The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years.
2. It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money.
3. “One of the real tragedies here is that collecting data effectively at this site was a huge engineering challenge, and it’s not the kind of thing where you can just leave your notes for the next person who comes in,” Dr. Palevsky said. “There’s a lot of expertise that has the potential to be lost.”
The administration is, as I understand it, in violation of the constitution by shutting this down. It was funded by Congress, twice. The executive branch cannot just legally not spend that money.
Climate Activist: The oceans are getting warmer & global currents are threatened by imminent collapse - we must do something!
Big Oil: Prove it!
Climate Activist: Data gathered between 2016 and 2026 shows ...
Big Oil: That's old news! Do you have more recent data?
Climate Activist: Well, no, because Trump2 dismantled the ocean observation system in 2026 ...
Big Oil: So you have no data to back up your claims?
Climate Activist: Not recent data, no, but ...
Big Oil: Case dismissed! Why should anyone take action based on subjective opinion, not backed up by hard data? For all we know the oceans could have miraculously cooled & the currents are fine!
It's mostly just about getting the data out of the news cycle. If you don't have new data on the oceans warming then there's no news story, so less pressure on Big Oil to greenwash their industry.
This strikes me as one of the recent moves by our political/capital class where they think that if they just remove the information that’s inconvenient for them, people will stop caring and let them do what they want. You only need to listen to the bosses who so many of us work for to know that they think climate change is just an inconvenience in the way of progress. Only time will tell if this strategy will work or not.
It's arguably not particularly inconvenient for the us political class? the us has been on a tear reducing per capita ghg emissions (also trade corrected ghg emissions). this has been going on for five decades now (consistently 2.5) independent of whether administrations or congress have been red or blue
iiuc us per capita emissions are not far from 1910s levels
I don't trust the trade corrected numbers, China uses a ton of coal still and is ever increasing in their manufacturing of good sent to the US. The number for the US has mostly gone down due to switching to natural gas from coal.
> ... “removal of all in-water infrastructure” belonging to the Ocean Observatories Initiative at sites along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and North Carolina, and in the waters between Greenland and Iceland.
...Why is Europe reliant on the US for monitoring oceans between Greenland & Iceland, i.e within European territory & therefore European monitoring? Shouldn't they have their own infra to work from?
None will. But hide them in a box, away from where others can see, and they will happily sign a piece of paper that says they do. One so called a ballot.
That wasn't arbitrary, and it wasn't for no benefit. It was so that landowners along the coast could continue to use faulty sea level studies to justify state road and infrastructure investments.
Terrible. The infrastructure installed in the oceans was meant to last 25 years. Instead after 10 years (or less for some), we are going to spend 1.5 years removing it all.
It’s not surprising though. Manipulating data and availability data is a regular government practice now. And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities often tell a misleading story, and can be influenced by rule changes on what gets counted.
This doesn't really seem relevant, nor does it seem credible that only Democrats are ever tempted to use trickery to make crime rates seem better than they are.
It’s directly relevant. You change data collection to present a false narrative and there are many ways to do it. Shutting down the ocean data infrastructure is one example. It presents a false narrative on climate change.
The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.
I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.
> And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities ...
Trying to "both sides" dismantling oceanographic science by equivocating it with "blue cities often tell a misleading story" is disingenuous at best and can easily be interpreted as deceitful by a reasonable person.
Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.
No, this is specious. I've tried to have conversations with reactionaries on topics that we both are even aligned on. It would always be crickets the moment I deviated from the reactionary talking points. The elusive point of view that is "not grasped" is merely some combination of religious fundamentalism and spiteful destruction. Which are both ultimately just rooted in stupidity.
Where I work we research some environmental data like ocean temperature (at depth and at surface), currents, acidity, salinity, and oxygen content. Most of this occurs at the surface, but a lot occurs via CTD (many depths) and autonomous drones along the continental shelf in BC, Canada.
You'd think this stuff isn't worth monitoring, but it paints a very interesting picture of where things were, where they are now, and where they're going.
We also do experiments on key species of the food web, analyze environmental DNA to see what's present and where, and generally try to figure out what this data says about living things and how they will handle these changes.
The bottom line is that something as significant as ocean currents will have massive implications for crucial things like transport, food, agriculture, and more.
This stuff is integral to the stability of everything you care about.
And it's not looking great. Acidity is increasing, temperature is increasing, oxygen is decreasing, food webs are transforming; we need to know what this means ASAP, and we need to figure out how to adapt. This isn't your kids' kid's problems alone. You will likely experience impacts in your lifetime.
A simple example: fat, nutrient-rich foundational species of the BC Coast's food web are gradually decreasing in population and presence, being replaced by less nutrient-dense species from warmer climates. Countless juvenile fish which underpin our commercial fishery stocks depend on the richer, more nutritious species to thrive. This could impact their populations and lead to even more expensive fish; and we're talking about species which were plentiful and affordable in my lifetime. As those species decrease in quantity, the higher trophic levels suffer as well. This will be reflected in countless ways.
We need to measure this stuff because it's the beating heart of our planet, and it's changing for the worse (as far as our well-being is concerned).
If it's economically valuable wouldn't the evil capitalist bastards squeeze their reserves or peasants a little drier to create their little money printing weather trend predictor? Or you mean it's economically valuable but negative or low ROI?
Are you not aware of any instances where "evil capitalist bastards" fail to act in their own long term interest? If not, then you might want to pay more attention.
You'd think that but the evil capitalist bastards generally think one financial quarter at a time and will absolutely dismantle the long-term prospects of just about anything if it gets them some shiny nickels.
Surely you're not proposing it is uncapturable economic value. That's not economics. As for the mechanics, first we have to hear what they were thinking about the substance of that value was. That's not my assertion, but rather the question posed by the persons I was replying too -- but virtually by definition economics involves the topic of capturable valuable. If it is not capturable value then I don't see how it's economic value.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
If it's actually usable economically then the government will partially recover (capture value) it via taxation. If US suppliers fail to match the predicted effects, then Chinese or other suppliers can. This yields tax receipts in China and elsewhere. So if it's actually 'distributable' then it is worth at least some non-zero capturable amount as sales to foreign governments if the US government will not be participating, even if you suppose no private entities will buy the information.
Because it would be really nice to know if some of the currents collapse when it happens rather than months later.
Even beyond that immediate need, the oceans are incredibly poorly studied and are of massive economic and military value to the United States. Baseline statistics on currents could be very useful for all kinds of as yet unknown science and applications. Countries that run a big navy do ocean science. It’s a form of dual purpose funding that benefits both civilian and military ships.
Because the other responses are incredulously focused at why someone would ask such a dumb question, the answer is that oceans affect everyone's lives.
Ocean currents and temperatures are major factors in storms, economic activity like trade, and ecosystems across the country. Monitoring them costs virtually nothing, and the benefits are huge.
The system cost like $350 million to build, and $40m/year to operate+maintain. Sending ships to remove 900+ pieces of hardware under 2 miles of ocean won't be cheap either.
Buoys with sensors, CTDs, and satellite data cost mere millions and are often supported by NGOs, indigenous communities, and even schools. They're a good deal, so to speak. We learn tremendous amounts from them, they provide learning opportunities for new scientists, they provide useful data to the transport industry, and so on. These are not things that are too expensive to maintain. These are things you decommission because you're ideologically opposed to them.
the US spends AT LEAST $1T/year on military—and a lot of that is used to murder a lot of innocent people just minding their own business. Cut the military budget in half to start and then complain about reckless
spending.
I’ll also add: abruptly killing programs costs more than it saves. The DOGE fiasco at USAID for example—the unruly unwinding of their finances incurred huge financial penalties. (I listened to an interview with a USAID whistleblower. It may have been interest payments?)
These ignorant and greedy billionaires destroying the people’s government based on vibes… a sick joke.
The cheapest option would be to leave them in place and stop monitoring. Removing them is costly, but prevents anyone from ever re-initiating the buoys. Like when they told NASA to burn up a weather satellite they did not like.
So the currents will continue to be tracked, no? :) Seriously, we should find out why this system was desired and created in the first place to answer this question. Good question...
The answer in general is we monitor things to understand them, so we know how they will affect us. Same thing we do for all the metrics that allow us to forecast the weather every week.
Because the information could sensibly inform public policy, potentially has serious effects on everyone, and doesn't obviously lend itself to private actors paying for its collection because there's no great way to monetize it. Though I wonder how genuine the question really is.
Yes, it might be like watching Trump (or really all the news). If you keep at it 24x7 you ll feel that the sky will fall down in a couple of days.
But if you stop watching him for like a month, nothing of consequence happens (mostly).
Maybe these current watching is like that. If you keep looking at it,too closely and because we don't know all the variables, may be we keep making wrong "doomsday" predictions every time something moves. I have observed that this shows up in many places where we don't really know how things work..
I would much prefer if someone closely monitor the level of poisons and pesticides in the food and water we consume. For example, every store should be visited by a government agencey to collect samples and test them for poison levels...
Because if they suddenly stop, it will quite likely have devastating repercussions for the entire globe. Weather patterns (which also effects food growing), sea life (more food), and probably some other non-food related things too!
Won’t markets adjust to that though. Market needs will lead to just-in-time innovation! If not, then victims can sue after damages incurred to recover their losses.
First of all, science is good in and of itself. Second of all, this science in particular seems helpful to predict the impact of potentially disastrous climate change.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.
Everything is changing. Including our influence.
That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?
We did, at least a dozen times, in fact it was never even closed. What even is a "strait of Hormuz," I've never heard of such a thing.
This maybe a bit of sarcasm, but it's actually accurate. The information was so contrived that multiple firms sent physical analysis to observe the strait in person. They all have said that the strait remains active with decreased but consistent transit. Regardless of who claimed the strait was open or closed. It's the reason oil markets are so hesitant to bid up futures contracts.
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, is ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
> The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground
It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.
I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.
The US doesn't even need boots on the ground to open the strait. Forget US casualties. The US is concerned with minimizing Iranian casualties. The goal isn't to just open up Hormuz, it's to replace the last major source of instability in the region. The IRGC has like 10% popular support in their strongholds. The US just needs to hit them when they stick their head up as often as possible while not overly galvanizing the local populations.
> last major source of instability in the region.
Are you forgetting the bad neighbor that keeps attacking most of its other neighbors, even while under ceasefire agreements? And then moving onto the land and saying "this is ours, time to redraw the border again.".
Because that, to me, screams instability.
This is just a different way if saying that we can't.
The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.
All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear.
You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.
Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.
None if catastrophic climate change kills everyone.
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.
Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI.
https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-...
I’m sure this has nothing to do with 3.1 million graduate students versus 500 F-35s.
For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military.
So no — your request to fund graduate students is more expensive than the F-35 program and delivers at best marginal results.
When you math through per unit or per capita or per year, we already spend more on education and science than the military — and it’s unclear further science funding to the detriment of the military would improve things.
I understand why you want more money, though.
Ok, but the military is being used for bad things not good things in one of the most easily defended countries in the world, a pure waste.
Basic science is never cheap, but none of that money goes to the grad students.
Then again, military weapons are indeed insanely expensive.
Someone has to pay for the kings mistakes and it might as well be you.
Kings don’t make mistakes. The people under them do.
It's cheap but it's prestigious. Ideologues and fascists hate that.
> the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student
This is not an unreasonably ratio between cutting-edge affection and long-term potential. Particularly when grad students aren’t currently configured to be earning positions.
> Democrats in Congress have said they will “fight” plans to dismantle the system
Putting “fight” into quotes here is terrific amount of low level shade for a scientific publication. chef’s kiss
"Proffer a strongly worded capitulation" was probably too much for publication.
Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.
interesting how that logic only applies about half the time.
You have about as much political power as a US party in the minority of all three branches. Mind letting us know what you’re going to do about it?
The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.
> 1 senator…
Oh, please, that’s not true. But yeah, you need 60 seats there in order to just ram things through. Right now Democrats don’t even have a plurality of the voting public so it’s not surprising that they are completely powerless.
> Democrats couldn’t even get a SC Justice…
On this one though I’ll fully agree with you, they were 100% ratfucked on Garland’s nomination. In no universe was that more than 0% ethically justified. That was a craven and cowardly scheme.
I wish I could find it but Simon Clark, someone who specialized in climate science, had put out a video about how we were only recently able to model the AMOC and it's shifting patterns thanks to this measurement we were doing
Edit: probably not this one but atleast tells us why measurement is needed https://youtube.com/shorts/-X5EhUbzLTY?si=_N92PNUiTi3STat6
Yrah probably someone at doge or the dept of war watched that and suggested dismantling it. What's next, closing down the NOAA because it's a "con job" and climate change is "a hoax"?
Let's not forget those from the big tech (you know the names) who kneeled before the king.
77,302,580 Americans made it happen. 87,037,184 voting-elligible Americans sat it out.
Sat it out, or were forced out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...
The GOP rigs elections in their favor and it's well known, but they don't have the power to throw out an additional 87 million votes if they don't go in their favor.
The logical conclusion then if despite everyone voting D then getting their votes tossed out is either violent revolution or liberation with the aid of another nuclear-armed state.
So 164,339,764 made it happen?
I don’t like any direction this administration has taken, but acting like it’s not the completely legitimate will of the people is BS.
The will of the plurality you mean? He didn’t win a majority of the votes. He is the legitimately elected office holder; but it was not the will of the people, it was the outcome of this particularly electoral process. Many American electoral processes require a run off without a majority for this reason, and it’s an intensely weak platform to claim a mandate from - not only did more people not vote for you than half the voters, if you add in the people who could vote but didn’t, it’s by far not “the will of the people”.
If those who sat out were forced to vote for one of the two major party candidates, Trump’s margin may have been larger.
I think liberals and progressives have a higher propensity to vote, so you can’t assume the non voters are less likely to lean Trump.
How long were the lines to vote in black neighborhoods?
https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/104/6/1341/9774...
There's no one to blame but the left. The worst candidate in american history and somehow they still lost?
I choose to blame the people that actually voted for this. Fuck those people.
Interesting how "the worst candidate in history" is not to blame.
They share some blame but a transsexual dog would have been a better candidate than Trump.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Voting for Trump (or anyone with an R by their name) is wrong; sitting out a vote is wrong. Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance, however ineptly?
I don’t think blue team good, red team bad is a very mature take on US politics. When it comes to substantive policy, voters do not get a choice. The same wars will be fought. The same lobbies will have their way. Just because one side will make tactless, self-deifying inaugural speeches about how the sea levels will cease to rise and the Earth will start to heal, that does not make it so.
I think that if these sensors were providing useful, actionable information more valuable than their maintenance cost is not well supported.
Yeah, no, it actually is mature enough.
I hate divisive language like this, but Trump's only major concrete "policy" (if you can call it that) during his 2024 campaign was that he was going to somehow lower grocery prices by instituting tariffs, so basically "I'm going to lower prices by raising prices".
That kind of idiotic quasi-doublespeak should have been a disqualifier for anyone with at least a two-digit IQ, but apparently it's not. The only scenarios that I can see for this:
1) People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
This is so idiotic because even if that were true, which it's not, those costs would still be ruled into the price. "No such thing as a free lunch" is very literally the first thing I learned in high school economics.
If people are that stupid then they can be blamed for their idiotic decisions to vote for a despot.
2) They didn't believe in the tariff rhetoric, and wanted to vote for Trump based on a nebulous "personality".
This is stupid. If you really are voting for people because you think you'd "like to have a beer with them", then you should be blamed when bad things happen from that idiotic decision.
----
Kamala wasn't a great candidate, but I really hate this sort of "both sides"-ing people do to try and engage in apologetics for people's ridiculous decision to vote for the guy who, as far as I can tell, has literally no expertise in anything.
> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I mean, I guess?
I don't really feel like I needed to be taught that tariffs would raise prices. I'm not some hypergenius, it really seems pretty obvious to me.
> Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance
Resistance is one definition, I guess. A very loose definition.
I'd call it what it was. Career sociopaths decided to put a career sociopath on the ballot instead of someone the left's citizens would actually like.
I'll let you in on a secret. The main reason why nobody is catering to you isn't because what you want goes against the money, the status quo, or whatever big bad you imagine. It is because if you don't vote then you are about as good for them as nipples on a Breast Plate. There is a reason seniors get everything that they want: it is because they always show up to vote!
Both sides had their "worst" candidate, but in different ways. One of them was a convicted felon.
Convicted rapist
That’s not what he was convicted of, though?
Why not name them?
Zuck Musk Bezos Pichai Thiel
Add more
Missed Tim Cook.
Let’s map their names to the companies they run. Then reflect on whether we buy their products: Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla/SpaceX, Meta.
Maybe we need a new FAANG acronym for the new American authoritarian-cozy rightward-veering tech industry.
Let’s see, we’ve got:
Meta
Amazon
Google
Appl… oh
A subgroup of MAGMA, for owners of secret volcano lairs.
Brockman
Ellison and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia
It's basically 'Don't Look Up' at this point, stripped of all metaphor and potential to entertain.
“Don’t Look Up” stripped of entertainment was just “Don’t Look Up”
I think it was just reality, unfortunately
let's not forget that orange retard would have never got reelected if the preceding retards had not cranked their clown world antics up to eleven. the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum. just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
> the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum
Unfortunately now we have both.
> just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
What exactly is your problem with it? "just look at this" while pointing to a normal tweet doesn't exactly make your point.
Unlike the stable genius who's bragging how he "aced" not one, but four! cognitive tests
The tumor continues to grow, everyone knows its getting worse daily. Still no one dare speak of the cure.
This makes sense.
Facts cease to exist because you ignore them. I think Huxley wrote that.
"Ignorance is strength" would be the Orwellian take.
The Power of Positive Thinking is one of the few books Donald Trump has really internalized and it shows in his approach to a lot of issues.
There’s also the deluded cynics who profit from fossil fuels. Why mess up their good time??
‘If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any’ - Trump on COVID19
We live in a post-factual world [1].
I'm not sure people realize just how dire this is. The politics of the largest, most powerful country on Earth are dominated by people who truly believe in dispensational premillenialism [2]. For these people their time on Earth is limited. Wrecking the Earth doesn't matter. The afterlife is forever. Senior government officials take seriously bringing on the apocalypse through a red heifer [3]. In fact, it's the cornerstone of Christian Zionism [4].
And what began this political movement? Racism [5], specifically a ruling that schools in the South couldn't be both tax-exempt and segregationist.
We live in the dumbest timeline.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkWl7NaGprE
[3]: https://medium.com/@nour_alhakk/the-red-heifer-and-the-u-s-a...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
[5]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...
This was the most one-sided article I’ve seen in a while.
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
https://archive.is/fZ9CN
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.
Ah! Both siding science.
A point that can be made is that just throwing money at something that doesn't produce meaningful results can be good to cut. having a bunch of data for data sake doesn't make it useful.
> I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project
That's the problem.
> This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision.
You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision." Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single article.
There's an entire chain of events that the links in this article lead to...
...The NSF is descoping.
...It's descoping because of federal funding cuts to science projects
...Federal funding cuts are due to the pro-fossil-fuel biases and climate change skepticism of the rightwing Trump admin and its backers. Their ideological strategy to redesign American society, Project 2025, specifically mentions disbanding this very monitoring project.
I was able to find that all out in about 15 minutes though I'm neither American nor reside there or anywhere close to it.
A performative pretense of informed decision making is not the same as genuinely making informed decisions.
I'm asking in good faith here. If it's so critical, then why couldn't the same data be collected and published by another sovereign nation?
Or even the UN? That organization that this administration wants no part of...
The Atlantic Currents are at risk of collapse , or is it the system ?
Deutsche Physik, but with more idiots.
This is what you get when worm infested brains lead the country
Don’t blame the worms, they’d have done better on their own…
Or insect infected brains (ref: Braindead TV series)
Tracking the currents isn’t going to have any effect on the currents.
That's why I drive with my eyes closed. Looking at the other cars on the road isn't going to have any effect on them.
Don't worry we're not going to do anything to mitigate their collapse either. Especially not with this attitude.
Or our reaction to and preparedness for consequences of early collapse? Is course correction impossible?
Most scientists don’t expect a full collapse this century, but even a significant slowdown would have major climate consequences particularly for Europe and Africa.
> Tracking the currents isn’t going to have any effect on the currents.
That's exactly why I never get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases. I mean, I'd rather not know, right??
/s
Don't Look Up was supposed to be satire.
Here's a frankly better article from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatori...
A few points:
1. The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years.
2. It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money.
3. “One of the real tragedies here is that collecting data effectively at this site was a huge engineering challenge, and it’s not the kind of thing where you can just leave your notes for the next person who comes in,” Dr. Palevsky said. “There’s a lot of expertise that has the potential to be lost.”
The administration is, as I understand it, in violation of the constitution by shutting this down. It was funded by Congress, twice. The executive branch cannot just legally not spend that money.
10 years from now:
Climate Activist: The oceans are getting warmer & global currents are threatened by imminent collapse - we must do something! Big Oil: Prove it! Climate Activist: Data gathered between 2016 and 2026 shows ... Big Oil: That's old news! Do you have more recent data? Climate Activist: Well, no, because Trump2 dismantled the ocean observation system in 2026 ... Big Oil: So you have no data to back up your claims? Climate Activist: Not recent data, no, but ... Big Oil: Case dismissed! Why should anyone take action based on subjective opinion, not backed up by hard data? For all we know the oceans could have miraculously cooled & the currents are fine!
It's mostly just about getting the data out of the news cycle. If you don't have new data on the oceans warming then there's no news story, so less pressure on Big Oil to greenwash their industry.
This strikes me as one of the recent moves by our political/capital class where they think that if they just remove the information that’s inconvenient for them, people will stop caring and let them do what they want. You only need to listen to the bosses who so many of us work for to know that they think climate change is just an inconvenience in the way of progress. Only time will tell if this strategy will work or not.
It's arguably not particularly inconvenient for the us political class? the us has been on a tear reducing per capita ghg emissions (also trade corrected ghg emissions). this has been going on for five decades now (consistently 2.5) independent of whether administrations or congress have been red or blue
iiuc us per capita emissions are not far from 1910s levels
I don't trust the trade corrected numbers, China uses a ton of coal still and is ever increasing in their manufacturing of good sent to the US. The number for the US has mostly gone down due to switching to natural gas from coal.
> ... “removal of all in-water infrastructure” belonging to the Ocean Observatories Initiative at sites along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and North Carolina, and in the waters between Greenland and Iceland.
...Why is Europe reliant on the US for monitoring oceans between Greenland & Iceland, i.e within European territory & therefore European monitoring? Shouldn't they have their own infra to work from?
That stretch of ocean is closer to Canada than it is to mainland Europe.
All the more reason as to why it should be Canada monitoring that portion of the ocean.
That will fix it!
"If We Stop Testing, We’d Have Fewer Cases" - Trump
Just doing random evil things for no benefit? At this point it's just wanton vandalism. Punks in suits smashing windows and setting fire to cars.
Can anyone here, hand of heart, say "I agree with this decision"?
They probably think it's "cutting costs" or "reducing waste" or something. At least the fraction of the motive that isn't just corruption.
None will. But hide them in a box, away from where others can see, and they will happily sign a piece of paper that says they do. One so called a ballot.
Remember when North Carolina banned sea level rise? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-caroli...
That wasn't arbitrary, and it wasn't for no benefit. It was so that landowners along the coast could continue to use faulty sea level studies to justify state road and infrastructure investments.
This, too, isn't mindless vandalism. It's worse. It's greedy, it's short-sighted, and it's cruel.
I hope they’re able to pause this before they start destroying it.
But like the east wing I’m sure they’ll do it before there’s a chance.
Fuck this timeline
Don't look up!
Or down. You know what, just strap those vr goggles on and stop looking at anything real at all!
Terrible. The infrastructure installed in the oceans was meant to last 25 years. Instead after 10 years (or less for some), we are going to spend 1.5 years removing it all.
It’s not surprising though. Manipulating data and availability data is a regular government practice now. And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities often tell a misleading story, and can be influenced by rule changes on what gets counted.
This doesn't really seem relevant, nor does it seem credible that only Democrats are ever tempted to use trickery to make crime rates seem better than they are.
https://abc7news.com/post/report-finds-lack-police-efficienc...
https://abc7.com/post/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-att...
Perhaps the Los Angeles DA stopped focusing on low-level crimes so he could focus on the gangs running rampant within the LAPD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
The USA is consistently in the top 10 of nations with the highest incarceration rates. Prosecuting fewer "crimes" is a move in a better direction.
It’s directly relevant. You change data collection to present a false narrative and there are many ways to do it. Shutting down the ocean data infrastructure is one example. It presents a false narrative on climate change.
The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.
I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.
> And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities ...
Trying to "both sides" dismantling oceanographic science by equivocating it with "blue cities often tell a misleading story" is disingenuous at best and can easily be interpreted as deceitful by a reasonable person.
I hate this timeline
For real. Cant fix stupid. Its so sad.
Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.
No, this is specious. I've tried to have conversations with reactionaries on topics that we both are even aligned on. It would always be crickets the moment I deviated from the reactionary talking points. The elusive point of view that is "not grasped" is merely some combination of religious fundamentalism and spiteful destruction. Which are both ultimately just rooted in stupidity.
Can someone explain to me why we should continue to pay to track these currents? Genuine question.
Where I work we research some environmental data like ocean temperature (at depth and at surface), currents, acidity, salinity, and oxygen content. Most of this occurs at the surface, but a lot occurs via CTD (many depths) and autonomous drones along the continental shelf in BC, Canada.
You'd think this stuff isn't worth monitoring, but it paints a very interesting picture of where things were, where they are now, and where they're going.
We also do experiments on key species of the food web, analyze environmental DNA to see what's present and where, and generally try to figure out what this data says about living things and how they will handle these changes.
The bottom line is that something as significant as ocean currents will have massive implications for crucial things like transport, food, agriculture, and more.
This stuff is integral to the stability of everything you care about.
And it's not looking great. Acidity is increasing, temperature is increasing, oxygen is decreasing, food webs are transforming; we need to know what this means ASAP, and we need to figure out how to adapt. This isn't your kids' kid's problems alone. You will likely experience impacts in your lifetime.
A simple example: fat, nutrient-rich foundational species of the BC Coast's food web are gradually decreasing in population and presence, being replaced by less nutrient-dense species from warmer climates. Countless juvenile fish which underpin our commercial fishery stocks depend on the richer, more nutritious species to thrive. This could impact their populations and lead to even more expensive fish; and we're talking about species which were plentiful and affordable in my lifetime. As those species decrease in quantity, the higher trophic levels suffer as well. This will be reflected in countless ways.
We need to measure this stuff because it's the beating heart of our planet, and it's changing for the worse (as far as our well-being is concerned).
Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
If it's economically valuable wouldn't the evil capitalist bastards squeeze their reserves or peasants a little drier to create their little money printing weather trend predictor? Or you mean it's economically valuable but negative or low ROI?
Are you not aware of any instances where "evil capitalist bastards" fail to act in their own long term interest? If not, then you might want to pay more attention.
You'd think that but the evil capitalist bastards generally think one financial quarter at a time and will absolutely dismantle the long-term prospects of just about anything if it gets them some shiny nickels.
Let's say you're an evil capitalist bastard. How would you capture that value?
Surely you're not proposing it is uncapturable economic value. That's not economics. As for the mechanics, first we have to hear what they were thinking about the substance of that value was. That's not my assertion, but rather the question posed by the persons I was replying too -- but virtually by definition economics involves the topic of capturable valuable. If it is not capturable value then I don't see how it's economic value.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
Uncaptureable value that remains distributed is very much economic value. You seem to be falling for the efficient market fallacy.
If it's actually usable economically then the government will partially recover (capture value) it via taxation. If US suppliers fail to match the predicted effects, then Chinese or other suppliers can. This yields tax receipts in China and elsewhere. So if it's actually 'distributable' then it is worth at least some non-zero capturable amount as sales to foreign governments if the US government will not be participating, even if you suppose no private entities will buy the information.
[delayed]
...Unironically in complete agreement.
If the data is economically valuable, mbgerring, then the private market should be the ones shouldering the costs.
This comment seems to presuppose that the "evil capitalists" are infallible.
People can be bad at their jobs and/or can act irrationally.
Because it would be really nice to know if some of the currents collapse when it happens rather than months later.
Even beyond that immediate need, the oceans are incredibly poorly studied and are of massive economic and military value to the United States. Baseline statistics on currents could be very useful for all kinds of as yet unknown science and applications. Countries that run a big navy do ocean science. It’s a form of dual purpose funding that benefits both civilian and military ships.
Because the other responses are incredulously focused at why someone would ask such a dumb question, the answer is that oceans affect everyone's lives.
Ocean currents and temperatures are major factors in storms, economic activity like trade, and ecosystems across the country. Monitoring them costs virtually nothing, and the benefits are huge.
> The system, which began operating in 2016, was designed to run for at least 25 years
It's likely that a majority of the cost to collect the data has already been paid for...
Evidence?
The system cost like $350 million to build, and $40m/year to operate+maintain. Sending ships to remove 900+ pieces of hardware under 2 miles of ocean won't be cheap either.
https://awakenedcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/share...
because it is useful information for the public benefit, and not very expensive.
What does it mean to be not expensive? How much do all the not very expensive endeavors as up to?
Buoys with sensors, CTDs, and satellite data cost mere millions and are often supported by NGOs, indigenous communities, and even schools. They're a good deal, so to speak. We learn tremendous amounts from them, they provide learning opportunities for new scientists, they provide useful data to the transport industry, and so on. These are not things that are too expensive to maintain. These are things you decommission because you're ideologically opposed to them.
honestly, who gives a shit?
the US spends AT LEAST $1T/year on military—and a lot of that is used to murder a lot of innocent people just minding their own business. Cut the military budget in half to start and then complain about reckless spending.
I’ll also add: abruptly killing programs costs more than it saves. The DOGE fiasco at USAID for example—the unruly unwinding of their finances incurred huge financial penalties. (I listened to an interview with a USAID whistleblower. It may have been interest payments?)
These ignorant and greedy billionaires destroying the people’s government based on vibes… a sick joke.
a spec on the budget compared to retiree support, military and healthcare.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't be frugal with how the money is spent. (I think this move is stupid.)
The cheapest option would be to leave them in place and stop monitoring. Removing them is costly, but prevents anyone from ever re-initiating the buoys. Like when they told NASA to burn up a weather satellite they did not like.
So the currents will continue to be tracked, no? :) Seriously, we should find out why this system was desired and created in the first place to answer this question. Good question...
The answer in general is we monitor things to understand them, so we know how they will affect us. Same thing we do for all the metrics that allow us to forecast the weather every week.
Because the information could sensibly inform public policy, potentially has serious effects on everyone, and doesn't obviously lend itself to private actors paying for its collection because there's no great way to monetize it. Though I wonder how genuine the question really is.
Yes, it might be like watching Trump (or really all the news). If you keep at it 24x7 you ll feel that the sky will fall down in a couple of days.
But if you stop watching him for like a month, nothing of consequence happens (mostly).
Maybe these current watching is like that. If you keep looking at it,too closely and because we don't know all the variables, may be we keep making wrong "doomsday" predictions every time something moves. I have observed that this shows up in many places where we don't really know how things work..
I would much prefer if someone closely monitor the level of poisons and pesticides in the food and water we consume. For example, every store should be visited by a government agencey to collect samples and test them for poison levels...
Because if they suddenly stop, it will quite likely have devastating repercussions for the entire globe. Weather patterns (which also effects food growing), sea life (more food), and probably some other non-food related things too!
Won’t markets adjust to that though. Market needs will lead to just-in-time innovation! If not, then victims can sue after damages incurred to recover their losses.
Obvs That money is much better spent helping those poor ‘victims’ of ‘lawfare’
First of all, science is good in and of itself. Second of all, this science in particular seems helpful to predict the impact of potentially disastrous climate change.